I am trying to experiment with brewing a few small batches using different fruits and peppers and was wondering if there was a decent recipe out there that I could use as a base that would work well. Any tips/hints/recipes out there?

I am trying to experiment with brewing a few small batches using different fruits and peppers and was wondering if there was a decent recipe out there that I could use as a base that would work well. Any tips/hints/recipes out there?

Stick with a simple one, like for a one gallon batch use 1lb Extra Light DME maybe .25-.50oz hops @ 60 mins and a Clean yeast like Nottingham. That is a very simple base to experiment with fruits, etc.

__________________
The mind is like a beer, it does the most good when it is opened.

I would also say to use a pretty basic recipe, such as a pale ale that isn't too hoppy, if you're just interested in seeing how the fruits/spices/peppers blend.

That being said, some spices go really well with citrusy hop flavors (I have made a christmas ale with cascade), peppers go really well in a stout (I do a chipotle stout), and spices often go well in a brown ale base in addition to darker base beers (vanilla porter anyone?)

I recently made a malt-forward APA that was minimally hoppy that I think is what you could be looking for. It is essentially a blend of Yoopers' and EdWort's APA recipes that you can find in the recipe section. I used Nottingham, as was also previously suggested. Either of these recipes could be scaled down and/or converted to extract. In terms of brewing, you might be best off just brewing the full recipe and then splitting it if you want to do smaller batches with different additions.